


The Black Sun

by Bullfinch



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Wine (The Witcher 3 DLC)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22688380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bullfinch/pseuds/Bullfinch
Summary: After the medal ceremony, Geralt receives a visitor in his room.
Kudos: 15





	The Black Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y’all, I finally played Blood & Wine (4 years late I know) and I loved Syanna’s plotline so much that I could not stop myself from writing just a lil something on it. I also loved the Renfri plotline so there’s some of that. I have not consumed all Witcher media and I did this in a couple of hours, as a result please forgive me if it’s a bit messy.

_You’ll have to make a choice, and you’ll never know if it was the right one._

Geralt is thinking about Renfri again as he changes his clothes. It took far too long for him to escape the medal ceremony and the pack of nobles who hounded him instantly after, but he managed it at last, back to the room where the duchess was kind enough to put him up. The suit is well-tailored, so at least he was comfortable physically if not in any other sense. The shirt he peels off, the sleeves turning inside-out, and he tosses it in a pile on the floor. Even the embroidery on the inside is impeccable, which seems the most absurd part. Who’s going to see it? The ridiculous shoes come next, banished to the corner where they land after he kicks them off. Finally he frees himself from the trousers, hopping once, and he drops them on top of the shirt without ceremony. The fabric lies in a soft crumple, exuberant tangles of teal grapevines buried beneath marching rows of golden fleurs-de-lis. 

Geralt pushes the pile aside with one bare foot and grimaces out at the setting sun. The problem with Toussaint (one of many) is it’s too damn warm. Even now, the orange sunlight streaming through the window makes sweat prickle on his skin. At least there’s no need for armor now, for once. He crouches at his pack with a wince. Detlaff got him good during their final engagement, and his ribs are still feeling it.

He got Renfri in the ribs too, near the start of it when he stupidly thought he might not end up killing her. She took it like she’d taken shots to the ribs before, no flinch on her face beneath the curls of dirty brown hair. 

Geralt hikes his trousers up with a groan. That makes two of them. The armor helps, true, though it’s nice not to have to wear it, to move without the extra weight of the reinforced leather and chain. He takes the tie out of his hair and lets it fall, squinting at the full-length mirror standing in the corner next to his rejected shoes. His hair and beard were meticulously trimmed just before his appointment with the tailor, and he might look almost presentable were it not for the ugly swathe of bruises that bloom on his abdomen like an aggressive mold. 

Renfri took the shot and backed off for a second, he remembers that. Her eyes were bright with fury like he’d rarely seen. The kind of fury that would burn down a city and never feel bad about it, not in ten years, not in a hundred. But she wasn’t angry at _him._ Just that it was all happening just as she expected, again. She’d asked for help only to be cast away. _Again._

The door clicks open behind him and Geralt spins, comically unprepared, his trousers not even laced. But it’s no bruxa or loyalist assassin, only Syanna raising her hands in a gesture of peace, an arch smile on her face. 

“Close the door,” Geralt grumbles, faintly embarrassed. He crouches by his pack (winces) and digs for a shirt.

Syanna kicks the door shut behind her. “No need to make yourself presentable on my account, Geralt. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

It’s true—and she’s seen much more than this, but he still tugs on the first shirt he finds. (Black, to soak up the sun’s heat better. Great.) He rises and yanks his trouser strings tight, tying them off. “They letting you just wander around the palace now?”

“Oh, no. My retinue awaits me outside.” She jerks her head. “Aren’t witchers supposed to have ears like a rabbit’s? I’m surprised I could…well, surprise you.”

Geralt leans against the bedpost and folds his arms. “Had my mind on other things.”

“Ooh, mysterious.” She approaches. “You’ve got lovely hair, you know. It’s only a shame it hides your face.”

Geralt cocks an eyebrow at her. “You _like_ seeing this mug?” He shakes his head. “They were right. You really are twisted.”

Syanna draws up short and lets out a startled laugh. “You’re not _hideous,_ Geralt. You’ve got…a certain charm.”

Geralt rolls his eyes. “Flattering as that is, you don’t need to flirt with me anymore. You’re already safe from the gallows.” 

“The axe,” Syanna says absently. “That’s how we do it in Beauclair. More _drama.”_ She looks up. “Besides, that’s not why I’m flirting with you.”

Geralt appraises her. The sting of being snuck up on is fast disappearing, and a wry smile rises to his face. “Don’t tell me it’s because you ‘ _need a man’_ again.”

Syanna laughs again, brassy and full. A bandit’s laugh, not a queen’s. “Oh, my. I did lay it on a bit thick, didn’t I? I suppose I needn’t have. I suspect you wouldn’t have agreed to bed me if you were planning to tell my sister to lop my head off in the Gran’place.” She lets out a long sigh. “Anyway, it’s fun, that’s all. I don’t get to do it much. I can’t fuck my crew and none of my marks are ever very appealing.” 

Geralt nods. “Is that why you’re here, then? To flirt?”

“No. Well, a bit.” She gives him a grin that starts to fade right away. “But no. I wanted…to thank you.” 

Geralt had been sort of hoping they wouldn’t have to talk about it. He doesn’t want her to thank him. He wants her to talk to her sister again, and to not be dead. “No need for that. Just did what I thought was right.”

“Hm. Nobody else seemed to think it was right,” Syanna says drily, though the humor is weak. “Except my sister, I suppose.” 

She quiets, her gaze dropping to the floor, and Geralt waits until she’s ready. The fine lines at the corners of her mouth deepen as she chews her lip, thinking of what to say or how to say it. Finally she speaks again. “All this time I thought Anarietta had turned her back on me. I wanted her dead. But I was wrong.” Syanna shakes her head. “It was stupid of me. To think that,” she tries, and looks up at Geralt.

It would be easier that way, of course. If it were a stupid mistake. But it wasn’t, and Geralt doesn’t want to hurt her but wants to lie to her less. “No,” he replies. “It wasn’t stupid. Your own mother and father rejected you. You were beaten and starved. It’s not surprising you thought your sister abandoned you as well.” 

Syanna folds her arms, hugging herself. The truth is as it has always been. The unthinkable cruelty inflicted on her was no mistake at all, and neither was what came of it, the mistrust like cracks riven deep in her foundations, the pain black as the sun that watched over her entrance into this world. “Of course not,” she murmurs. 

Geralt isn’t much for words (at least she isn’t about to cry—he’s worse with that), so he says all he can think of, something else that’s true along with all the misery Syanna carried to get here. “Anarietta was glad to see you back,” he tells her. “And she’ll be glad to have a sister again.”

Syanna takes a deep breath and nods, her eyes still stuck somewhere around Geralt’s chest. “Yes. At least I have her. I…think it will be enough.”

Geralt doesn’t reply. He doesn’t mind her here, and is glad to listen if she needs it. At last her gaze lurches upwards again and meets his. “You could have told Anarietta I wasn’t worth saving. I probably would have deserved it, after what I did.” 

Geralt shifts, sensing the conversation veering in a direction where he’d rather not take it. “Well, like I said. Just did what I thought was right.”

“But it wasn’t. I killed four knights. I used a man who had loved me once,” she insists. 

“Not a man,” Geralt counters. “And you…” He grimaces, cutting himself off. Doesn’t want to talk about it.

“The curse. You’re familiar with it,” Syanna pushes. “Did you know others like me? Other girls born beneath the black sun?”

Geralt pushes his hair back, slowly, and keeps his mouth shut for a minute. 

Of course he doesn’t want to talk about it. The question has dogged him for decades and he’ll never answer it. The choice was made, and there’s nothing more he can do. But Syanna should know, because she’s been laboring under the misconception that he simply sees the best in people when the reality of it is much less virtuous. “One,” he tells her. “I knew one.” 

Syanna’s brow creases as she searches his face. “Is she dead?” she asks, and without waiting for an answer, “Did you do it?”

His fingers slip through his hair and it starts to fall across his face. He doesn’t bother to tuck it back. He’s thinking about Renfri again. She seemed almost impossible crouching next to him by the river. Such a small person, unassuming in manner, undistinguished in appearance, to have survived that much. And then the next morning he ended her life with his own hands. “Yeah,” he admits. 

Syanna nods with an understanding that abrades him instantly. “Because you had to,” she says. 

“Did I?” he asks, and watches Syanna as if waiting for an answer. It’s unfair. She can’t know. No one can—except Renfri could, maybe. But he ran his sword through her and left her body lying in the mud. 

Syanna throws her hands up. “I suppose I can’t tell you that. I’m sorry.”

She’s exasperated. As she has a right to be. It wasn’t fair of him to ask. Geralt rubs his forehead. “Sorry. Just…thought you should know. Me saving you, it wasn’t entirely a selfless act.”

Syanna shrugs. “I don’t know about that. You still did it. I’m still alive.”

Then she reaches out and takes his hand in both of her own and somehow it’s many times more intimate than the tryst they shared in the clouds just a few days ago. Her hands are warm, calloused from her life of lawlessness. “I owe you more than I can ever make up to you,” she says. “You’ve given me another chance. And if I can have one, I don’t see why you can’t as well.”

Geralt stares down at her fingers folded over his own. Has it been long enough? Does he betray Renfri again if he lets her rest? He shakes himself a little. Can’t betray her. She isn’t even here.

Syanna takes him to the window and sits on the cushioned sill, pulling him down with her. He sits opposite her but she’s already gazing out at the sunset, the sky layered in forge-yellow and orange like venom, the scattered clouds limned in pink like the flush of warmth in her skin. Across the glittering river vineyards stretch for acres, bursting with vines ready for the harvest. “Toussaint is so beautiful,” she whispers. “I’d forgotten.” 

Geralt has never thought much of it but lets her enjoy the view—someone else might as well take advantage of it if he won’t. Instead he slouches back against the stone archway and rests his other hand over hers.


End file.
